‘The World Cricket Legends in the Wild’ dedicated to Tiger Pataudi
By CricketCountry Staff
Durban: Nov 15, 2011
‘The World Cricket Legends in the Wild’ event of the year 2011 will be dedicated to former India captain Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi. The event will be held at the Phinda Mountain Lodge in South Africa.
“The players from both South Africa and India will be wearing black arm bands for the match on Tuesday and on their crest will be 1941-2011. The period marks the 70 years that Tiger lived his life,” Beyond Boundaries managing director Jaideep Singh Parmar was quoted by the Times of India.
Beyond Boundaries is the organisation responsible to bring the event in South Africa wilds. Earlier, it was held in the Alps.
Parmar added, “Tiger was an inseparable part of the previous edition and the cricketers interacted with him like never before as he was always known to be very private. In fact, it was his query, ‘We’ve had cricket on snow, now what next Jaideep’ that set me on the road to conceptualising this.”
Parmar, who is the nephew of former BCCI president Raj Singh Dungarpur, added that the company is trying to bring the event to India.
World Cup-winning India captain Kapil Dev, who will be leading the India veterans against their South Africa counterparts asked, “How about cricket under-water”?
Kapil wants the Indian government to learn something from this project. “See what innovative thinking can achieve. India too can develop tourism if someone can take these ideas forward. We have the mountains, the seas, the river, history and culture.”
Former India cricketer Sandeep Patil, who is a wild-life enthusiast spotted a group of cheetahs during the trip. “I loved wild life. Tiger is my favourite animal. As Kenya coach I was fortunate to travel deep into the forests and chase my hobby. I also encountered a scary moment during a ride in the National Park at Nairobi. The radiator of my Volvo broke while tracking a rhino and after that for the next one hour, the rhino was chasing me and my wife Deepa.”
Former India skipper Dilip Vengsarkar said, “I’m not a wild life enthusiast, but during the game drive, I saw a cheetah going for the kill and teaching her cubs how to hunt. That was something.”